Images From Before Las Vegas Was The Bright-Lights Big-City

It's hard to imagine Vegas as anything other than the fast paced, bright lights, gamblin', let's-go-get-married city that it is today. But the image of a quiet, dark town was what LIFE magazine was trying to portray in their skeptical 1955 view of Vegas. Most of these images taken for the magazine never appeared in the June 20, 1955 article. LIFE was trying to illustrate the scarcity of lights and customers after their big grand opening had died down, but these images say otherwise. It looks like they were doing just fine in 1955, and with close to 2 million people living there today, Vegas is still going strong.